Adapted from Redden, M., & Newman, J. (2024, May 16). Exploring marginalized voices: Information literacy beyond the peer review paradigm [Presentation]. WILU 2024, Richmond, BC.

Activity: Match these sources with one of the categories in the honeycomb model above

Things to remember:

1. Remember that a lot of relevant information is either not available or easily findable on the Web—use library resources as well as websites.

2. When searching in the Library and on the Web, consider your search terms carefully—good keywords make the difference in finding good results. Add keywords related to specific issues, populations, service contexts, or practice.

   • e.g. "adult guardianship" "elder abuse" policy prevention

3. Pay attention to the details of the documents you find — jurisdiction, date, author, context.

What is Grey Literature?

Grey literature includes research- and evidence-based documents that are written by academic or professional experts on topics relevant to their professions, clients, communities or society in general (and that are not formally published in a journal or book).

These documents are produced by various groups including government agencies, non-government/not-for-profit organizations, industry groups, think tanks, research centres, service agencies, and professional organizations.

• Note: The quality and nature of this literature can vary a lot, so be sure to critically evaluate the sources you find. 

Some examples include organization annual reports, policy papers, practice guidelines, issue briefs, newsletters, government documents, speeches.

• Example document: Closing the Gap Between Vision and Reality

Why Do I Want to Use it?

• Grey literature tends to be more practice-oriented -- it reports on activities done by an organization or on the research they do, and is published with professionals, practitioners, and policy makers in mind.

• Grey literature can be published and shared online with little or no cost, so it is often widely accessible to everyone (if you know how to find it!).

• It can provide examples of best practices, guidelines, and recommendations for things like service provision, program design and implementation, policy development, and advocacy.

• Peer-reviewed research is slow to produce and publish, and sometimes the most recent and relevant information is shared in a report rather than a journal article.

Examples of advocacy groups and policy organizations

Advocacy groups and policy research organizations provide in depth analysis and critical evaluation of legislation and its impact on the people it serves. Look on these organizations' websites for policy briefs, research reports, etc.

These documents can be found under headings such as research, publications, press releases or resources.

• First Nations Child and Family Caring Society

• Centre for Social Justice

• Homeless Hub

• Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives

• Canadian Child Welfare Research Portal

Examples of Service Agencies

On many agency websites you can find basic information for service workers and the general population served by the Act. Look for fact sheets, newsletters, FAQs and other resources.

You can also find research reports and advocacy statements that provide evaluation and analysis of the Act (including strengths, limitations, challenges, etc.)

Start with:

Inform Alberta: A directory of community, health, social and government services across Alberta.

Examples of Service Agencies (not all of these are relevant to every Act -- search Google to find more):

• Discovery House

• Alberta Seniors, Community and Social Services

• YWCA

• Calgary Catholic Immigration Society

• Service Canada

• Alberta Supports

• Office of the Child and Youth Advocate - Alberta

Where Do I Find More?

The Canadian Public Documents Collection at MRU Library (see the Canada Commons link below) is a great source that includes research papers, reports, studies, policy papers & briefs, environmental scans and more. 

The Web is the best place to find these types of documents.

• Hint: it helps if you know some of the agencies or organizations related to your topic where you can start your search (browse these websites to help generate some ideas for the types of website you’re looking for). For example, the Edmonton Social Planning Council conducts research and analysis on social issues. They have links to reports and publications on their website.

Browse this list of think tanks and research organizations for ones who research and report on social issues in Canada. Search their websites for the publications and other information resources they provide.

Conducting Research With LibrarySearch 

LibrarySearch is MRU Library's one-stop search interface/catalogue that brings together resources across format, time, and subject. 

We have about 1.3 million e-resources and 221,000 physical resources in our collection, and LibrarySearch searches across those.

Things to remember when using LibrarySearch:

1. Sign in to save searches, items, and to request materials.

2. Use the pin icon to save books and articles to your Favorites for future reference.

3. Use the filters on the right. You will use Availability, Resource Type, and Date filters most often. Filter settings can be "locked in" so that you don't have to reapply them to every search that you make.

4. Some items may not be available, however, you can request unavailable items using what is called interlibrary loan.

5. When viewing an item record, scroll down to the Get it (for hardcopy/physical items) or Access options (for electronic items) section to get access to the item.

Helpful Search Operators to Use in LibrarySearch

You can use what are called search operators to search in a way to combine or omit different terms by telling the search engine exactly what you want and this can help you save some time (and frustration!)

• Use quotation marks to keep specific phrases together:

  • "public space"

  • "inclusive design"

  • "age-friendly communities"

• Use AND to combine search terms (LibrarySearch automatically creates an AND when you write terms one after another, but it can be good practice to use an AND to help you understand the searches that you build). AND narrows your search:

  • "inclusive design" AND "public libraries"

  • ageism AND "elder abuse"

• Use OR to connect two or more near synonymous or similar terms. OR broadens your search:

  • "climate change" OR "global warming"

  • senior OR elder OR "older adult"

• Use wild cards to substitute a letter or suffix with a symbol:

  • access* (in this example, the search access* will search for words such as accessible and accessibility)

Some search examples:

drug (abuse OR misuse) (youth OR teen) alberta (treatment OR intervention) "social work"

drug (abuse OR misuse) (youth OR teen) alberta (treatment OR intervention) (confinement OR protection) "social work"

youth (abuse OR substance) (use OR misuse) family (treatment OR intervention)  "case study"

Conducting Research With Google Scholar

Google Scholar

Besides providing links to resources in MRU databases, Google Scholar links to online repositories that contain articles the author has been allowed to upload.  Academia.edu and ResearchGate are among the repositories searched by Google Scholar.

The Cited by function will forward you to scholarly material that has cited a resource that you may be interested in. The Related articles link will direct you to similar articles. 

Helpful Search Operators 

Google Scholar's Advanced Search is found by clicking the menu icon in the top left.

You can also add search operators to Google Scholar searches to build your own custom advanced searches in similar ways to LibrarySearch:

• Use quotation marks to keep specific phrases together:

  • "climate change"

• Avoid using AND to combine search terms with Google Scholar, as the search engine automatically creates ANDs between concepts and sometimes adding an additional AND can confuse the search syntax.

• Use OR to connect two or more similar terms:

  • "climate change" OR "global warming"

• Use intitle: to limit your search to search terms only appearing in the title of a resource:

  •  intitle:"climate change"

• Use filetype: to specify the type of file you would like to retrieve in your results:

  • filetype:pdf

• Use site: to limit your search to specific web domains:

  • site:.edu

  • site:.gc.ca

Often, these grey literature documents do not appear in the results of a basic Google search. 

Use advanced search techniques in Google to find reports and other documents that don't come up in a simple search (often because they are attached as PDFs rather than as part of the website content).

You can simply search the name of an organization or another relevant keyword, and include the word report.

Example:     child protection alberta filetype:pdf OR intitle:report

There isn't a single tool that will find all available grey literature sources. Often, a targeted Google Search is the most effective way to find these types of resources. You can also do a deep dive into the websites of relevant organizations.

Google Search Tip - Limiting to Canadian federal government websites

All Canadian governmental websites end with gc.ca. The following Google Search limits your results to web addresses with this ending

social determinants of health site:gc.ca

Other endings that might be useful for a site: search

site:gov will find American governmental pages

site:edu will find American college and university websites

Google Search Tip - Searching within a particular organization's website

You can also use site: to do a deep dive of a particular website. For example, this search is looking for documents about elder abuse prevention on the Alberta Elder Abuse Awareness Council. Place the homepage address after site:

prevention site:albertaelderabuse.ca